He said: “We are looking at local solutions. I know that a lot of people have been calling me all sorts of names on the social media but, from my experience, one thing that I know you have to do to conquer the virus is that you have to boost your immunity. We do have local solutions and, of course, we have to defer to experts’ opinion as part of the home-grown solution to deal with COVID-19.

“People may ask if we have been funding the research institutes very well. They may even ask if we are in a position to bring any kind of solution to the world. My answer is yes. Even chewing something like bitter-cola. When the western world was having flu season, they had flu shots. But here, we have things like catarrh. When we are crossing over from dry season to rainy season, people always fall sick. Cold, cough, catarrh, we have ways of dealing with all of these locally.”

The governor also announced that the isolation process for the two new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the state had already been initiated and contact tracing and collection of samples had commenced.